Ian Douglas joined the Telegraph in 1999 when the web was young and simple, and is now head of digital production. He writes about technology, science, the internet and beekeeping.

Augmented reality will make mechanics of us all

This video shows off an augmented reality system developed for the US marines to help them with field repairs to the LAV-25 A1, a light armoured vehicle.

The operator, who is not a trained mechanic, has no trouble fixing the problem guided by the arrows and messages superimposed onto his field of view by the goggles, which are attached to a standard G1 Android mobile phone strapped to his wrist. He uses the phone's touchscreen to advance the programme. 3D representations of the correct tool to use and how they should be handled are included.

An LAV-25, soon to be fixed by AR-equipped soldiers

This further video shows how virtual interfaces, buttons, signs and sliders, can be added to the environment itself with no customisation of the thing you're looking at, so even the phone's screen can be tucked away out of sight.

Having once spent two hours lying in a gutter in the freezing rain trying to change the starter motor on a Volkswagen Golf, I can see how incredibly useful this would be. A nice bold red arrow pointing to the place where the last nut should have been fitted and the correct order in which they should be attached would have seen me back inside next to the radiator with a glass of rum in minutes.

This might be cutting edge military technology now, but what we really have here is the Haynes manual of the near future.